Readout of Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim’s Address to Tribal Summit

The Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), Office of Environmental Justice and Office of Tribal Justice convened a Federal/Tribal Regional Summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this week. The event was hosted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Summit participants also included representatives from the FBI, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Tribal nations representatives from California, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Todd Kim of ENRD addressed attendees on Tuesday over videoconference. He highlighted the U.S. government’s commitment to respect Tribal sovereignty and self-governance, further environmental justice and combat the climate crisis.

“Tribes face substantial challenges, exacerbated by the ever-increasing impacts of climate change, in establishing and preserving sustainable homelands,” he said. “I feel very confident that the federal and Tribal summit participants can make real progress in identifying ways to improve our cooperation – and the outcomes we achieve – on these incredibly complex, and incredibly important, matters.”

AAG Kim highlighted efforts by ENRD to adjudicate and litigate on behalf of Tribes, whose communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental justice concerns. He pointed to the Justice Department’s creation of the Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ), housed within ENRD, and publication of a Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy, which provides guiding principles to ensure the Justice Department’s enforcement efforts are focused and coordinated to address environmental justice concerns. Last week, OEJ issued its first annual report on implementation of the Strategy. 

In addition to addresses by AAG Kim and others, the summit featured breakout sessions focused on environmental justice and Tribal homelands, securing Tribal water rights, Tribal communities and the climate crisis, trespass claims and jurisdictional challenges. The third day of the summit focused on criminal enforcement, including addressing the alarming number of murdered and missing indigenous persons – a terrible phenomenon which can sometimes coincide with an uptick in illegal and legal resource extraction on or near a reservation.

The summit was the final of three Regional Summits planned for 2023, and followed national conversations with Tribes held in Washington, D.C., in November 2022 and Columbia, South Carolina, earlier this year. The summits are intended to deliver on the promise in the Justice Department’s Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy to work with Tribal governments and other federal agencies to “address and incorporate Tribal concerns into the Department’s enforcement work.”